Thread: 55 Wagon Progress

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I wanna come next year!

Do you have an apprenticeship program for busted down old vets?

Hamilton VA?

Today found us doing some repairs on a 4700 International. This is the second of these I've done in the past couple years. It seems International doesn't use quite enough heat on the spot welds holding the doors together. The panel inside the door that serves to bolt to the hinges is prone to separation from vibration and just plain day to day abuse that these trucks see. So we drilled out all the spot welds that had already failed, drilled some 1/8" holes to pull the panel back in place with some wing nut clecos, and plug welded things back in place..











The missing paint shows how much the door was flopping around. There was only a few spot welds left up at the top..

















With the hinge panel welded back in place, the door sets where it belongs now, good gaps, and the latch holds!

Crikey!
To have the door of your truck fall apart like that would be enough to bring a tear to a glass eye.

Just as well you are in their vicinity to make it better than new.

I guess QA/QC was off that day..

Can't say I've seen that one before. But in this case it's a good thing.

Originally Posted by 34_40

I guess QA/QC was off that day..

Can't say I've seen that one before. But in this case it's a good thing.

A lot of things on those trucks are built, let's say, inadequate. They are an economy type truck and the fit, finish, and assembly left a lot to be desired IMO. We had a fleet of 75 of those at a place I used to work. One of the good things about them was parts interchanged for a lot of years so the ones we had out back were picked pretty clean.


Robert, nice work on that. That truck looks pretty rust free and with your fix should get them many more years of use out of it. It's way cheaper than buying a new, or newer one!

Nice job BUT how did you manage to weld the panels back together with out messing up the paint??

The area of the spot welds (where the door gasket sits) is offset from the door skin about 1/2"

Started the evening off with some TIG practice, here tacking two panels together....

https://youtu.be/aTqQJoecqCw

Next, to use our fancy dancy paint rollers, getting epoxy inside the rocker panels and inner quarter in prep for installing the wheel wells...









...and used a brush to cover the bare metal that was above the quarter panel's baffle..



There was a bit of overflow, or dust control shall we say.



One rocker down, one to go..

Welded some more TIG coupons last night. I had a couple questions about weld placement, so I decided to do some samples that mimicked various body shape types.

First, we have a flat version, this would simulate the flat area at the bottom of a door skin...



The second panel has more crown, such as toward the top of a quarter/door skin....



Comparing the two...



Next, we have a repair piece that is joined at the beltline bead...



The flat area distorts quite a bit... Normally we would planish the weld after cooling to remove this distortion, but here it was left to better compare distortion amounts..





Looking at the three samples, the flat one moves/distorts the most. The crowned panel a bit less, the beltline bead even less..



This helps to show the benefit of weld seam locations, we should select anything but the low crown/flat areas if at all possible.. The crowned areas or those with beltline bead details will help to hold any distortion in check.

With the rockers and inner quarters covered with some SPI epoxy primer, tonight we'll get the quarter panel baffles welded in place so we can install the wheel wells.





Here's our home-made baffles:





Primer cleaned off for the plug weld holes..








Kyle plug welding:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AIDbEy_uLc


Now plug welded in, we'll clean up these welds tomorrow evening, epoxy prime and seam seal around the top profile of the baffle inside the window extrusion area.

When we fabricated the quarter panel baffles we trimmed the upper profile to leave about a 1/16" gap, so that any possible body flex would be less likely to rub paint..





Plus, it gives a good anchor for the seam sealer....





Then we used masking tape to mark off the edges of the flange so we could transpose these to the wheel well for drilling plug weld holes...











Next, we have another yellow vehicle to work on. A new driver at a local high school missed seeing the bright yellow oversized vehicle as it passed, and backed into the side of it..





New filler panel was made out of 18 gauge steel, ready for some SPI epoxy..

Well here's the saga of the latest bus repair. It seems a new driver at a local high school was attempting to back out of a parking space and missed the BIG YELLOW vehicle already occupying where he intended to move. Maybe they should change the color of those buses so you can see them coming.





Note door gap closed up here...























So from the onset, it looks like we need one new door, a filler panel, some "adjustments" to a couple door frames, painting and buffing.


Filler panel was fabricated out of 18 ga cold rolled steel, abraded with the DA, and prepped for SPI epoxy primer..





New door and filler panel have been sprayed with SPI epoxy, here shown after blocking with 400 grit..





New hardware getting prepped for painting...





Stainless hardware is used to stave off the rust issues. The bright polished finish does not provide good adhesion for a paint finish. Additionally, we've found that excessive paint build on these promotes cracking/chipping of the paint while driving them in during installation.. So to minimize the build on the hardware, we have eliminated primer on these parts. We media blast with 80 grit garnet media, blow off with air, and they get yellow urethane directly on the abraded fasteners. This method has shown to work well with NO chipping...














Dis-assembly..











The filler panel is actually sandwiched between two flanges at each luggage box, so the bus needed to be jacked up about 8" where the filler panel could be slid in place from the bottom, and bus dropped back down to level before attachment so we didn't have any twist in the boxes.











All door gaps addressed, painting, touch-ups, and buffing complete, ready for school!

Great work, and great pics!

Rich

Must be fun jacking a Bus up 8"! Do you use some tall version of a floor jack, or 4x4's stacked with hydrolic jacks? Great repair. I think you've done a few buses on here. The School must be good for business!